his heart was making him very uncomfortable. He wished some crude
gesture, some single ugly word, would do it. "You thought him an
interesting man?" he asked naggingly. "You don't surprise me. It was a
bit too plain you thought so. I'll thank you not to be so forward with a
client again. It'll give the office a bad name. And chatting at the door
like that!"

He looked for his umbrella, which was kept in this room and not in the
hall-stand, lest its handsome cairngorm knob should tempt any of the
needier visitors to the office, and removed its silk cover, which he
placed in the pocket where he kept postage-stamps and, to provide for
emergencies, a book of court plaster.

"I'm sure I'll not have to speak twice about this, Miss Melville," he
said, with an appearance of forbearing kindliness, as he passed out of
the door. "Good night."


IV

She paused in the dark archway that led into Hume Park Square.

"It can't hurt me, what Mr. Philip said, because it isn't true." She
wagged a pedagogic finger at herself. "See here! Think of it in terms of
Euclid. If you do a faulty proof by superposition and haven't remembered
the theorem rightly, you can go on saying, 'Lay AB along DE' till all's
blue and you'll never make C coincide with F. In the same way Mr. Philip
can blether to his silly heart's content and he'll never prove that I'm
a bold girl. Me, Ellen Melville, who cares for nothing in the world
except the enfranchisement of women and getting on...."